Slim pickings for The Mill today as we enter post-window asceticism, a time not so much of rumour-mongering as rumour-finagling, rumour-make-doing, rumour-filching and rumour-siphoning-after-dark-using-a-straw-from-poorly-guarded-military-facilities.

The Sun has the news that Rafael van der Vaart may have believed in the past that Manchester United were a bigger club than Spurs. "If you are leaving Real Madrid, there is only one club you can join that is not a step down – and that's Manchester United," the Dutch not-quite-Wesley-Sneijder is quoted as saying a while ago when he wanted to go to Manchester United. "I want to play again and if possible every week, with a beautiful club. I'm totally happy," he said yesterday, adopting the kind of fixed, unwavering grin where your features don't move and after a while your teeth look a bit like fangs and your eyes remain entirely cold and disinterested throughout.

The ex-Manchester City bit-part man Martin Petrov is worried about human relationships. "At the moment at City people are becoming more bad than good. The human relationships are lost and the trust is lost too," Petrov told the steaming, bubbling, freshly laid Bulgarian newspaper Trud.

The Strangely old-fashioned looking friendly Cockney-urchin-chimney-sweep-type midfield enforcer Scott Parker wants to sign a new five-year contract at West Ham. "Parker will become a Hammer for life if the owners have their way," a Gollivan source threatened, thumbing through a discarded niche interest bongo mag.

Louis Saha has cured his chronic knee problems by putting leeches on them. Amazingly, while he's lying on his flamingo-down sofa watching his 78-inch television on a Saturday afternoon with leeches on his knees, he feels no pain whatsoever.

And the Wigan chairman, Dave Whelan, says he will quit if Wigan fans boo the manager Roberto Martínez. A gambit which, for the avoidance of doubt, is intended to prevent Wigan fans booing Martínez rather than encouraging it.

In the Daily Mirror Fulham are planning to give the ace goal-hulk Bobby Zamora a pay rise to stop him waddling off to Liverpool in January. Mark Schwarzer could still leave. He feels drawn to Germany.

Alan Curbishley, who hasn't had a job for two years apart from the odd taciturn appearance on a minor Sky Sports football sofa, is first choice for the Aston Villa job. Randy Lerner has spent the last three days at a London hotel with Villa's chief executive Paul Faulkner interviewing out-of-work football managers, which sounds like the premise for a hit-and-miss humorously self-referential late-night BBC2 sitcom.

Ian Holloway is trying to sign the ex-Arsenal goalie Richard Wright, who is a free agent. Wright, who looks convincing from a distance but has slightly wild eyes, is training with Crystal Palace.

Ivelin Popov's £2.7m move to Blackburn from the Bulgarian female sanitary product Litex Lovech has fallen through after he was denied a work permit. Popov has apparently not played enough internationals. However, he will start for Bulgaria against England on Friday, fired with crushed ambition. Good work, Home Office.

And Zlatan Ibrahimovic has blamed Pep Guardiola for him not being very good at Barcelona: "The problem was one person. In my book, a great coach solves his problems. A lesser coach runs from them." That "one person" is apparently Guardiola. Not Ibrahimovic.

The Daily Mail says the Manchester United mistake, Bebé, could have been signed for £125,000 instead of £7.4m if Sir Alex Ferguson had made the terrible decision to buy him without having seen him play six months earlier, rather than buying him without having seen him play this summer. Bebé, who has never played above the Portuguese third division, and who seems to look tearful and upset quite a lot of the time, was available on the cheap because his club was facing a winding-up order.

Arsenal want to sign the 17-year-old Japanese whiz-kid Ryo Miyaichi from something called Chukyodai Chuyko high school. Miyaichi is a striker. Blackburn and Leeds are both after the former Stoke midfield strong-arm Amdy Faye who is a free agent after being released in the summer.

And Robbie Keane "snubbed Besiktas" on deadline day, turning down a last-minute £8m move despite the fact that the Turkish club had already done all the paperwork, which shouldn't really, in The Mill's opinion, be a consideration.